re Europe etc

Submitted by the Grand Infidel of Kaffiristan(Australia), Jun 14, 2012 at 00:46

Ah, Ianus - you'd been silent for 2 days - so I was expecting a scathing serve in response....

"the Grand Infidel of Kaffiristan wrote :

> Who sent the money to where they think they could make more money laundering their ill-gotten fortunes in a capitalist system and enjoy living in freedom and relative safety? Russians wasn't it?<

"....Many have doubts as to their real nationality. "

If they're born in Russia and hold Russian passports - and have even worked for the KGB/FSB then then let's just call them Russian.

"But the problem is different in two aspects.First, creating capitalism in a country without long primary accumulation of capital means you create criminals' capitalism as only criminals can overnight get enough money to buy factories and resources you sell. "

I've noticed that has been the game plan for many astute investors - criminal or otherwise. To buy derelict factories and collectives for very low prices. Enterprising villages have even pooled their funds to do the same thing - so it's not limited to criminals. So - in any case if they want to be capitalists and start building wealth - they have to start somewhere - whoever they are. They know at least 1 alternative has been a complete failure.

"Second, the West seems an ideal place for money laundering,doesn't it? "

Where else would you suggest as a possible alternative if you were criminally inclined? Africa?

Having lived in a western capitalist society , and worked even in the finance industry - I would say if one thought that it was only a huge money laundering machine - that person would be mistaken. Of course money accumulated by criminal activities - drugs, prostitution, arms dealing etc does go on - but is laundered into legitimate businesses - which produce goods and services and pay taxes etc. Not that I am justifying that - simply pointing out that that is what happens. Taxes paid are used for hospitals, electricity, roads, transport, police and intelligence agencies (which actively seek out crimes leading to money laundering by the way) , defence etc.

"Money doesn't stink, does it?"

Depends how you use it. Can you have any sort of life without it? What alternative do you suggest?

"Whetehr it comes from a cannibalist dictator of a Central African state or from a wanted Russian embezzler is irrelevant.The money makes the West both happy and blind. Who cares about 5 mln homeless children in Russia when a Russian billionaire "invests" his $ billions in a US or Swiss or British bank?"

Money is just a medium of exchange - and when pooled has no 'flavour' or history behind it. The $200 billion dollar tax pool has millions of hours of bricklayers sweat , millions of hours of doctors' skill and concentration, millions of hours of store attendants and nurses sore feet , millions of the funds from errant motorists fines, takings from casinos where crims launder there money etc etc behind it. Yet it all ends up as a number in an account. So in that sense - where it comes from is irrelevant. There's no emotion attached to it, no right or wrong. It's untraceable and annymous- it just is.

> They don't dream of occupation by the US now <

Has it become a nightmare like everywhere else in Eastern Europe yet ?

You mean Estonia? No, not at all. In fact - you might know it is the best performing economy in Europe.

Ianus: "In 1941 there were more urgent tasks for Estonian,Latvian and Lithuanian fascists to accomplish ...e.g. exterminating the Jews and Russians."

So no Russian ever fired in anger at an Estonian? Do you think Finland should have just bent over for Joe Stalin and taken it too?

"And Stalin exterminated the old opportunist nomenclatura and created a rigid military-industrial complex that withstood the most efficient and ruthless war machine on earth. And war is the fatehr of all things."

If they wanted to win the war against the Nazi's they weren't going to do it by sending men with rifles against tanks were they? Even Stalin could figure that out. So the most efficient and ruthless war machine in earth (from a much smaller country with a much smaller population) of course could only be stopped with aircraft and tanks - which is why those factories were set up in the Soviet Far East.

As as you dislike them so much - I can understand how you somehow failed to mention US aid to the ' rigid military-industrial complex that withstood the most efficient and ruthless war machine ' . Especially this pertinent fact: "In addition to almost 15,000 aircraft, most fighters or bombers, Russia received over 400,000 motor vehicles, many being medium or heavy military trucks. American-built trucks and other vehicles made up 60 percent of the Soviet's total vehicle fleet by 1945." Even if the US did it for the ulterior motive of defeating the Nazis, credit where credit is due.

"In 1991 the Russians learned what "Vae victis" really means when their forniers were pushed back to the 17th centuries and themselves were confronted with an economic and social genocide."

You mean Ukraine got to be its old self again? And Estonia got back most (but not all ) of its territory? Latvia & Lithuania free to start afresh? Not one of those countries ever said ' hey, hang on a minutre, we don't want this, we want to be subsumed by Russia'. Why was that?

And the islamic 'stans' of central Asia got back into the businesws of regressing to the 7th century ruled by despots? I guess Germany experienced the same thing after WW2 - but as a punishment after actually going to war. eg. Konigsberg, Prussia.

"Had Krushoov or you led the USSR in 1941, I am sure you would have won the war as successfully as Petain did in France. "

Oh, so playing the man and not the game now? An absurd proposition - but it may have gone something like this : In 1941 if I led the USSR - as a western educated Australian - having known about the enforced incorporation of satellite states - I would have thought - 'what am I really defending anyway'?. I would have most likely disbanded the communist party and said that all formerly free republics that do not want to willingly be part of the soviet union, don't want to have to learn Russian , be forcibly indoctrinated into the beliefs of a social experiment (that was to become an abysmal failure ) and to be treated like serfs in their own countries - are free to leave. I also would have been looking at what was happening on the horizon and seen dark clouds of another form of totalitarianism threatening the country - much as we do with Islam today. And I would have sought allegiances with foreign powers who thought similarly. But then of course - underlings like Iossef Dzhugashvilli, bent on achieving political power - would have publicised my anti-state , anti-communist heresies - and had me carted off to a gulag, heavily sedated in an asylum or had me starved and shot in prison.

"..Why be ruthless if posterity may be angry at you?

"Better to do what the Jews did in Estonia in 1941. Dig peacefully the grave as told by the Estonian Polizei , lie down and be shot dead without complaining about anything."

Ah, Ianus - you love your cynicism, where would we be without it? All Estonians did not dig the graves for Jews, did not love the Nazis and did not love the Red Army.

Neoliberals envision individuals primarily as market participants, and states as enforcers for markets. The idea is that unregulated market capitalism will deliver efficiency, growth and widespread prosperity for all. In this view the 'dead hand' of the state saps initiative and discourages enterprise."

Wrong.<

Ianus: "What's wrong about that definition to your mind ?"

Yopu do yourself a disservice - that's a little too facile. You are smarter than to think I was referring to the definition of Neo-liberalism. In fact you knew my response of 'Wrong' related to you pigeonholing me as a neo-liberal.

">From what you've written I could finger you as a closet Stalinist. No doubt I'd be wrong as well, not knowing you personally or having any knowledge of the legacy you leave in society.<

"Before the war my father was a journeyman , if you know what that means. It's the lowest social level we had. "

I don't know what it means. I know they have a traditional carpentry trade guild thing in Germany where apprentices travel about of journeys - but that's certainly not it is it?

"Stalin gave him some land and an opportunity to raise decently and educate his children. "

In Poland? What was Stalin, a Georgian doing giving Polish land to Polish people? Absurd isn't it? Was it Stalin personally - or a byproduct of his policies issued in Polish towns?

In my uncle's room there were two pictures on the wall - that of the Holy Virgin and Stalin. He was a religious person and loved Stalin for what he had done for him. The system that was fraudulently imposed here in 1989 hasn't done anything to me, my family or most people I know. "

typo? I guess you mean 'for me' - because if it is 'to me' - then what are you complaing about?

"In fact it has done its best to push me down back to the position of a semi-serf in which my father had been. "

And yet with your education - and obvious intelligence (no sarcasm, I mean that) you have not been able to better your position? Your written English is near perfect, you have an EU passport and the opportunity I envy - the ability to travel to any European country in a day - for the hell of it. So what stops you getting employment in other countries? Fyi, I too have an EU passport but the 20 hour flight and expense preclude such sojourns for me.

Social regress and economic serfdom and demographic decay with few super rich and privileged bastards praised by corrupt and lying Western media are all we have "achieved"

The documentaries and news grabs I see on tv from Poland din't paint a picture of a depressed and moribund culture. Just the opposite in facyt. And they don't go out of their way to show the shiny side.

"thanks to the neoliberal regime change. A new level of serfdom as someone has aptly put it."

Can you explain the difference between 'liberal' and these 'neoliberals' who seem to be the cause of all the ills in the world in some people's minds?

"When you see a country - that for 600 years since the glorious battle on the Kulikovo Polje "

Is this Poland or Russia you are talking about now?

"in 1380 has been the impregnable bulwark of Christianity against the onslaught of evil Islam; that for 600 years has been pushing and extending the frontiers of Christianity at the expense of Islam , reconquering one territory after another from jihadist occupation - when you see this country suddenly ruined, looted, enslaved, impoverished,humiliated and abused by a certain other country that has never fought a singe real war against jihad; that has never reconquered a single square inch from dar al-Islam on behalf of Christianity despite its constant ranting on how Christian it is ; that has always befriended and enabled jihad against the other country, that has recreated the Islamic yoke in two European provinces which Russia once had freed from Islam ; and when you now see the other country using the most aggressive and regressive forces of Islam to promote its policy of controllable chaos and is going to use them against a third big non-Moslem country; and when you observe with the growing weakness of Russia the rapid rise and triumphs of Islam, then ALL considerations on how exactly , by whom and in whose interests the ruin, depopulation and plunder of Russia was organized must be quite relevant,useful and necessary."

"If you think otherwise, then maybe you have been taught an alternative history of our continent ? Maybe in your history books Bosnia and Kosovo are not yet purely Moslem de-Christianized states and the US military base Bondsteel near Urosevac which soon will be sold to such a staunchly Moslem state as Turkey hasn't been built yet?"

And your history books do not tell you that Australia has a mostly European derived population (Brit, German, Swedish, Scot, Irish, Duitch, Italian, Greek, Croatian, Serb etc etc
) with an advanced communications infrastructure and access to free media? So that we can see Europe and its politics quite clearly from a somewhat detached perspective?

"Maybe heroin transported in US planes from US-controlled Afghanistan hasn't been produced and distributed across the continent yet to kill and ruin more kafiri sons and daughters to enrich the Moslem and US heroin barons ? "

"Despite its focus on the issue, Russia can't seem to stop the flow of cheap heroin across its borders from the central Asian countries of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, travel from these former Soviet Republics into Russia has remained visa-free. It hasn't helped that Russian border guards were removed from Tajikistan — which shares an 835-mile border with Afghanistan — in the summer of 2005. Government corruption has also fueled heroin traffic across central Asia and into Russia.

"Heroin defiles and corrupts everything," said Yuri Krupnov, director of the Institute for Demography, Migration and Regional Development in Moscow. "It is such a powerful geo-economic, geo-political force, with anonymous authors, that it is impossible to confront it."

Ianus: "Maybe the rapid re-Islamization of Central Asia has nothing to do with US strategic plans?"

The US has no control over the re-Islamisation of previously Islamic central Asian states. It's brought about by the same types of devious, unconscious, ill-educated islamic fascists we see in muslim enclaves in all our socieites The question should be about Saudi strategic plans

"...I leave all the other alternative and counterfactual history to you. "

Hey, not fair - that puts you on the high moral ground.

"I tell you what I see as real....If it is discordant with your doctrine, then I admit you have a right to stick to it."

i.e. if my 'doctrine' is related to fantasy or if Ianus mistakenly believes his doctrine is 'real' - then I have the right to stick to mine. Yes, that would be true no matter what my 'doctrine' would be. Unless I was living in the Soviet Union in 1941 of course! Or I was a non-Muslim in Iran etc

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Mark my comment as a response to re Europe etc by the Grand Infidel of Kaffiristan

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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".